Want and wealth equally harden the human heart, as frost and fire are both alien to the human flesh. Famine and gluttony alike drive away nature from the heart of man.
Interpretation
This quote highlights how both desire and excess can corrupt human nature.
Theodore Parker's quote suggests that both the strong desire for wealth and the greed for more can lead to a hardening of the human heart, much like how extreme temperatures can damage flesh. He draws parallels between the destructive forces of famine and gluttony, arguing that both extremes can alienate individuals from their natural and compassionate instincts, ultimately making them more self-centered.
In practice
In a discussion about materialism during a seminar, this quote can illustrate the dangers of greed.
A democracy,- that is a government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people; of course, a government of the principles of eternal justice, the unchanging law of God; for shortness' sake I will call it the idea of Freedom.
The books which help you most are those which make you think the most. The hardest way of learning is by easy reading; every man that tries it finds it so. But a great book that comes from a great thinker, — it is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth, with beauty too.
No man is so great as mankind.
Outward judgment often fails, inward judgment never.
You may not, cannot, appropriate beauty. It is the wealth of the eye, and a cat may gaze upon a king.
Let us do our duty in our shop or our kitchen, in the market, the street, the office, the school, the home, just as faithfully as if we stood in the front rank of some great battle, and knew that victory for mankind depended on our bravery, strength, and skill. When we do that, the humblest of us will be serving in that great army which achieves the welfare of the world.
A merely fallen enemy may rise again, but the reconciled one is truly vanquished.
There is no extrahistorical or eternalist or abstractivistically pure standpoint where we can get oriented in the absolute Truth per se before dealing with the concrete lineaments of how we happen exist in this time and place. We are participants in a dynamic system and we know its profile only by its action in organizing how we interact together and how we see our own selves. "The truth is the whole," and the whole is a system of living energy: our life as human and historical spirits.
It was like letting go and falling back into water and seeing yourself grinning up through the water, your face like a mask, and seeing the bubbles coming up as if you were trying to speak from under the water. And how do you know what it's like to try to speak from under water when you're drowned?
A 'mistake' is beside the point, for once anything happens it authentically is.
There are many, many nouns for the act of looking - a glance, a glimpse, a peep - but there's no noun for the act of listening. In general, we don't think primarily about sound. So I have a different perspective on the world; I can construct soundscapes that have an effect on people, but they don't know why. It's a sort of subterfuge.
In the name of Hippocrates, doctors have invented the most exquisite form of torture ever known to man: survival.
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